


wrapped in darkness and silence

by altilis



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, M/M, Sensory Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-06
Updated: 2012-07-06
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altilis/pseuds/altilis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of <i>Thor</i>, Loki falls into the wrong hands. (Warning for non-sexual non-consensual activities.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	wrapped in darkness and silence

**Author's Note:**

> The movie gives me way, way too much leeway to explore this pairing. And yeah, Star Trek phrase. Mucho thanks to [](http://sullacat.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**sullacat**](http://sullacat.dreamwidth.org/) for the beta! :D

Loki realizes, half an eternity after he's fallen (and still falling), that this feels eerily similar to being transported by the Bifröst, except the stars keep streaming, he keeps falling, and the infinite space around him provides no sign of a destination. Eventually, when Loki's too exhausted to keep counting the suns he sees, he closes his eyes, and wonders if he can put a stop to any of this.

And then he stops falling.

His body hits a cold, uneven stone ground from a height. Everything that was once numb is now in pain, including the top of his head where he first hit; Loki indulges in a groan as he tries to push himself up. He feels air in his lungs—a good sign—and when he opens his eyes, he can see his hands braced in front of him on a rough pavement of indigo and black rock. It's not home, but what use does he have of Asgard now?

Grumbled noises to his right draw his attention, and his pain is replaced by panic: monsters as tall as the jotunns, but thinner, with mottled grey skin and narrow, reptilian faces rush out of dark cavern like ants to a carcass. He only has a moment to realize there are countless of these caverns in the space above and below him, stretching out in a vast network of tunnels set against a black, starry space.

As Loki scrambles back, wobbling and stumbling and slipping against the rocks, dozens of monsters rush forward from the other caverns that open up onto the large platform he's landed on. He approaches the edge, not sure where else to go—what is another fall to being eaten alive?

When they have crowded him to the very edge and he is almost ready to jump (and fall, again), they all stop and fall silent, as if hearing a command he hasn't, and begin to step back to allow someone else through the crowd. This other figure is shorter than the monsters, who seem to cringe in his wake. On another day, in another life, Loki might have admired the craftsmanship of his robe, deep purple and black and outlined in gold, but he was too caught by the hint of an angular, ugly face just inside the hood.

This one makes no sound, but stretches out a wrinkled grey hand at him. It glows with a piercing blue color, getting brighter and brighter, and when Loki looks away from it he hears a ringing in his ears, growing louder, pushing aside all his thoughts, until he falls again.

\--

Everything is silent and black, but Loki knows he's awake. He's wandered off the branches of Yggdrasil and tumbled down interdimensional passageways enough times to tell the difference between sleep and the void. Loki blinks several times; the darkness remains. His arms are spread at his side, and when he tries to pull them they remain still, locked by some force that holds his very bones, and he is too wary about the limit of his own strength to really test his bindings, whatever they are. The same holds true for his legs.

The air around him carries no sound, either; when he opens his mouth to take a breath, he feels the air in his throat but doesn't hear the sound of it, not even in his own head. Neither does the air carry a smell or taste—Loki wonders whether that is truly the case.

_Who are you?_

The voice hits his thoughts like a fist to the gut. His body recoils, and he throws his head back—or he tries. His body remains immobile as he's left reeling from the invasion, hearing nothing but this other voice, unable to attach a face to it in his mind's eye. In his surprise, though, he manages to stop himself from answering right away, and as his silence continues to hang for one, two, three more seconds, Loki nurses the hope that he won't submit to this interrogation.

_Who are you?_

It booms louder in his head now, accompanied by a burning chill that starts to spread from his fingers, and in his panic he remembers Asgard, the casket, the frozen wastes of his true homeland, the terror of seeing his skin flush an unnatural blue—

 _Loki._ He shouts it, mind and body, but he only feels the vibration in his throat and the dwindling thought in head.

The voice says nothing more, leaving him to his silence. The cold retreats from his skin and the lack of touch or temperature sinks back: there is no pressure anywhere against his body, no slow convection of heat against his skin, no small breeze to disturb the air around him.

Loki has his mind to himself long enough that he begins to formulate a plan to get out of his bindings. While he still can't see, he imagines he is in a room made of the same rock he landed on, and he is likely lying down. He can't be certain. Every time he attempts to whisper a spell to his aid, though, either his magic fizzles on the last syllable, it disappears into the darkness, or it rebounds, and for a long, indeterminate time he has to deal with a tight stitch in his side because of it.

He's alone long enough that hunger begins to gnaw at him, and Loki starts to entertain the idea of sleeping in order to distract himself from it.

 _Where did you come from?  
_  
The voice hits him with the same force as before, almost stunning him. He struggles to string enough coherent thoughts together in an adequate response. _Asgard_ slips first, a golden city on a celestial island, but soon he remembers his favorite places from his past life: the aromatic orchard filled with Idunn's apples, the royal library with the panoramic view of the city, his bedroom chambers laden with books and green and black velvets, even the fields around the training ground where he spent hundreds of years practicing with Thor—

Briefly, as he forces himself to stop thinking of Thor, everything is silent again. The discomfort almost begins to settle back in.  
 _  
Where?  
_  
It feels more impatient now, asking him for identifying marks instead of letting him indulge in the paradise of his youth. So far removed from Asgard and so disoriented, he flounders for a desperate moment before tells what he knows: Nine Realms on the roots of Yggdrasil, the stars as he remember from Asgard, from Vanaheim, from Midgard. Loki forfeits what details he can, but he doesn't know where he is. He's not sure if it helps.

It must, he thinks, because the voice doesn't impose on him anymore. Loki takes a deep breath, trying to center himself, when a strong hand grips his chin, forcing his mouth open. Liquid pours past his lips and dribbles over his chin, and while he can feel the cool wetness of it, the drink has no flavor. Regardless, Loki gulps it down as best he can.

Before long, sweetness begins to creep in. It intensifies until the liquid tastes like honeyed ale, a poor shadow of the drink he had at his last, good dinner. His memories linger on that dinner and all the good food he will likely never eat when the liquid stops and the hand pulls back from his chin.

Loki's not so certain that he's on his back now with the way he feels the droplets cascading down his throat, but it is a welcome distraction from his silent, blind existence, until the sugar dries on his skin.

The taste of the ale lingers in his mouth for a long time, and when his boredom threatens to get the better of him, Loki licks the corner of his mouth and tastes it again. Sometimes he'll try a spell again, like one that would whisk a small flame into existence, but he still gets singed. The burn lingers on his arm and fades too slow for comfort.

Once, he thinks he hears a sound, but whatever it is not so much fades but blinks out of existence, as if teasing him (if it were really there). The same happens with his vision: he thinks maybe there was a flash of white from the corner of his eye or the ethereal hint of blue in the blackness he sees, but after minutes (or hours) of trying to convince himself there's light, he does the opposite, and he sees nothing again.

Without anything to distract his eyes, his mind is left to dwell on vivid memories. Loki forces himself to not relive the mistakes of his last days on Asgard, thinking that he can't spare the self-reflection in this predicament, so instead he lingers on the benign: taking care of Sleipnir's stall in the royal stables, climbing three hundred marble steps to rise to the top of the tallest tower in the city, a thousand childhood summers spent along the rocky banks of Asgard's rivers.

_What are you?_

Loki is almost familiar with it now that he can grit his teeth and bear the initial discomfort of this voice in his head. His growing frustration helps, too, not only from being trapped in his own mind but the vague wording of the question. How is he supposed to answer this? He feels a push against his mind, like a weight bearing down on his thoughts, and Loki thinks—what is he, really?

The only thing he can offer up that doesn't feel duplicitous and that he won't have to explain (because he doesn't have the energy or the voice to do so) is he is, unequivocally, a sorcerer. This is the one facet of his identity that hasn't been tainted by his new-found jotunn heritage, and he cherishes the title, even if he can't cast a spell a proper spell in the predicament he's in. Even when the weight remains insistent, Loki offers up only this part of himself, and soon the presence retreats.

When he's left to his own mind this time, a hollow loneliness settles into his mind. A familiar, sickening sense of frustration swells in his chest—is being a sorcerer not impressive enough, still, half way across the galaxy? What more was his interrogator expecting? Will he be forever trapped in this darkness because he is not the prized warrior a king would want?

In his anger he thinks of Asgard. He thinks of Thor and his golden glow, but also the desperate look on his face when he fell, as if he didn't want Loki to let go. Then Odin, the all-knowing and all-seeing, who still denied him the pride of a task well done. Sif, who rebelled against him and took her brother and her friends with her. Thousands of little slights over hundreds of faces flood through his mind, and the emotion and the magic feel tight in his chest, ready to burst forth and destroy.

A sound rings in his ears.

He pauses, and at first there is silence, but then it comes back, a rhythmic pulse that stretches out into the abyss and doesn't echo either in his head or in the place where he is kept. Nearly an entire minute passes before Loki realizes it is his own breathing, and he chuckles and laughs. He can hear that.

To hear himself outside his body anchors him in the present and out of his memories. Loki's not certain that he's alone here, but he hears nothing else around him, so after an hour of whispering familiar passages to himself, he decides to test where he is, if he can. His voice gets louder, and he pauses for an echo. At last, he shouts rune names as loud as his lungs can manage—still, nothing—but when he sighs and swallows the last taste of honey from his lips, the space around him shakes with a deep groan.

Something is sliding across stone by the skin-crawling scrape of the sound that follows, and finally the groan stops with a soft, muffled thud. Footsteps hit the ground in large strides, starting from his front and then circling around him. He has enough of his pride to detest being on display for no benefit of his own. "Who are you?" he calls out.

"Thanos of Titan," it says from Loki's left with a power and strength that remind him of Odin's temper, the one he and Thor have only tempted once or twice and through their combined stupidity. Already Loki is wary about this conversation ringing in his ears.  A small part of him wishes he could return to his blissful, unstimulated existence, but he still remembers that loneliness from before—he needs something more than his own past to entertain him.

"You will have to pardon me for not recognizing the name," he says in his best attempt to sound the king he once was. Difficult, when he can't see his opponent. "Perhaps if I could see I might recall your face."

This man (or monster) chuckles somewhere behind him. Loki swallows. "No one of your kingdom knows my face, but soon you will know it well."

"What do you want?"

"What is worth your life?"

He doesn't know what to say at first. He has none of his most precious belongings with him, and what he fell with has been damaged or crystallized. "I have nothing with me," he says, and pauses for a reply that doesn't come. Well then. "My thievery is unparalleled in my realm, I could steal—" Loki hesitates, and a knot in his gut twists with guilt he shouldn't have. "Asgard has many treasures. The Warlock's Eye, the Orb of Agamotto, the Infinity Gauntlet, the Tablet—"

"Enough." Thanos' voice booms, and Loki waits, tense and hardly breathing. "We will see if you are worth your words."

All at once gravity and air pressure seem to remember he exists; his limbs are free to move and his body is free to fall from whatever height it has been at it. He hits cold, pocked stone in a pile of stiff limbs and not much else—the damp air presses all over his body, moving where it shouldn't as Loki pushes himself up. First he gets his hands underneath, pushes himself up to his knees, and he lifts his head into a strong, bruising grip.

Fingers dig into his neck, immobilizing his head and keeping him from sitting up. Loki hears his own breathing and heart pounding in his ears. He stares down at his hands—and realizes he can see them, and the grooves in the stone, and dark boots, all illuminated by a faint blue-white glow overhead. From what he's grown accustomed to, it's nearly blinding, yet the pain in his eyes can't rival his relief. There's at least a chance now that he can leave wherever he's landed.

Loki doesn't even move as his neck is released and the boots before him step back and turn. Only when Thanos is more than an arm's length away does he look up, past the boots and the golden armor and the solid muscular core, to the man's face with its broad jaw and glowing eyes. What is this man?

Thanos gives him a wicked, knowing smile that Loki can't muster the energy to return, and he steps towards an archway cut out of the wall, lit by the same blue glow that hangs in this windowless room. "Come," he says and steps out into the tunnel beyond.

Loki casts one last look around the room, noting its textured walls on all sides but also the complete lack of furniture. Where has he been? Were all his bindings conjured? Was he even bound to begin with? Devoid of such answers, Loki does the only thing he can do: he pushes himself off the ground and stumbles after Thanos.

**Author's Note:**

> Also at [Dreamwidth](http://altilis.dreamwidth.org/36131.html).


End file.
